Breaking down Orbán’s Hungary through South Park

Eleni Zampelis

Athens, Greece

Photo by Harish Karumanchi on Unsplash

What if I told you that to forecast the future of European democracy, you don't need a stack of policy briefs or a Ph.D. in political science? A few hours of South Park and a good Wi-Fi connection in Hungary will suffice.

Viktor Orbán's Hungary has been labeled many things: illiberal democracy, authoritarian populism, and managed democracy. But more descriptive than all of these, the most appropriate is in one of the most unlikely sources: South Park. Not so much because of nihilistic humor or its satirical critique, but because Orbán's Hungary increasingly resembles what happens when a Cartman philosophy governs a nation in a global order still clinging to the ideals of a Kyle-like morality.

Let me be clear.

South Park is, at its core, a show about a group of children trying to navigate a world where adult institutions are incompetent, corrupt, or delusional. Reasoned argument is never heeded; stupidity wins out because it shouts. Cartman, South Park's poster child for unrestrained narcissism and authoritarianism, consistently outmaneuvers the saner, more moral characters, not because he is correct, but because he is bold, manipulative, and loud.

Now consider Hungary. Over the past decade, Orbán has eviscerated independent media outlets, rewritten voting laws, and repositioned himself as not just a politician but Central Europe's culture warlord. His actions are ridiculous, like banning the teaching of LGBTQ+ topics in schools in the interests of "protecting children" or pursuing an anti-immigration policy when Hungary's birth rate collapsed and its economy cries out for workers. But these aren’t just theatrics-they have real consequences. The LGBTQ+ population of Hungary has found itself increasingly marginalized and demonized. Teachers throughout the country operate under self-censorship and the medical and labor sectors suffer from a deepening worker shortage.They're not tactical actions-they're Cartman action: absurd, harmful, and driven by ego rather than reason.

Just as Cartman commandeers the school PA system to make personal manifestos, Orbán has commandeered national broadcasting to make his own. Just as Cartman gaslights his friends into believing whatever is best for him in the short term, Orbán gaslights his people: the EU is a repressive overlord and cash cow, George Soros is somehow everywhere, and Hungary is besieged and triumphant.

But South Park satirizes not just a figure such as Cartman, but it also holds to account the world that empowers him. The adults in South Park are weak, easily diverted, or too scared to stand up to him. Their presence is performative, an empty gesture toward order rather than a source of it. Kyle and Stan, the series' self-proclaimed “moral compasses”, are habitually immobilized by the very audacity of what they’re confronted with-why are they even there if not just to express outrage that never actually translates into action? Similarly, the EU has frequently answered Orbán's slide into authoritarianism with empty words and procedural paralysis. Institutions that are supposed to stop the misuse of power too often become accessories by doing nothing.The EU was conceived with the idea to create a system based on multilateral cooperation under the rubric of shared values, but that again is quite routinely a hollow motto-more presence than purpose. Ring any bells?

Yet here's the most unnerving and frightening parallel : South Park satirizes you at how much is messed up. That's its brilliance, yet also its danger. It accustoms us to accepting abuse as entertainment. Orbán, like all modern authoritarians, has learned that lesson. Hungarian politics is now theater: noisy, self-serving, and utterly detached from empirical reality. Dissent is mocked as evil; opposition is mocked. In Hungary, as in South Park, it’s not about who is right, but who gets to dictate the joke.

This is not to suggest that Hungary is a cartoon or that Orbán is, in fact, Cartman (although one cannot help but speculate how he'd handle cheesy poofs). But South Park offers a valuable framework to consider how politics in the digital era is evolving into something more performative, surreal, and resistant to reason than ever before.

While Western critics will be tempted to see Hungary as a canary in the coal mine of democratic erosion, they might also see it as a lesson in media literacy. While South Park taught a generation to lampoon the absurdity of power, Hungary teaches us about the danger of politics as performative and for which no one knows when the joke is over.

The real challenge for Europe is how to confront Orbán’s policies and the South Parkification of politics itself, where power lies not in truth but in timing, irony, and narrative control.

In the end, if democracy becomes just another episode in the endless season of spectacle, then we’re all living in South Park, and ironically enough, Cartman’s the one writing the script.